Brannon, Robert

ORAL HISTORY OF ROBERT BRANNON
Interviewed and recorded by Keith McDaniel
March 18, 2011
Mr. McDaniel: I’m Keith McDaniel and I’m speaking with Mr. Robert Brannon, Bob, and thanks for taking time to talk with us.
Mr. Brannon: I’ve got more time than anything else.
Mr. McDaniel: So tell me a little bit about where you were born and raised and something about your family.
Mr. Brannon: Well I was born down in Overton County in 1931 and when they started to build Norris Dam in 1933 my dad was a coal miner there and he came to Norris to work as an electrician building the dam. We moved to Norris in 1933. He continued that till the dam was built in ’36 and then he become a police sergeant with the TVA [Tennessee Valley Authority] Police Department and he stayed with that until 1943 and he and Colonel Reeder of Reeder Motor Chevrolet in Knoxville went in partners to put Reeder Motor Company in Oak Ridge in ’43. During that time, everybody had to keep their car running the best they could. They’d run around on flat tires, wheels. You couldn’t buy tires. Oil was scarce. Gas coupons, you only get three gallons on one kind of a coupon. Doctors got five gallon on every coupon, and that lasted on up till after the war was over. I worked in the gas station on weekends and during the summer months, rode a bus from Norris. Was bringing workers all the way from Norris through Clinton in to build Oak Ridge and I would ride the bus down here on weekends and on weekdays during the school vacation I rode that dilapidated bus into Oak Ridge, worked eight hours in the gas station and then back to Norris again.
Mr. McDaniel: Back to Norris. So you lived in Norris during the war, is that correct?
Mr. Brannon: Yeah.
Mr. McDaniel: But your dad was down here working at the Reeder –
Mr. Brannon: Yeah, he was a fifty percent owner of Reeder Motor Company then.
Mr. McDaniel: So during the war you were probably in your teens, weren’t you?
Mr. Brannon: Oh yeah.
Mr. McDaniel: You were mid-teens.
Mr. Brannon: Yeah, the war started in ’41 and of course I was born in ’31. I was ten years old when it started.
Mr. McDaniel: Now did you have brothers and sisters?
Mr. Brannon: Yeah, I’ve got one brother and two sisters living and one deceased.
Mr. McDaniel: Now what about your mom? Was she just a stay-at-home – a homemaker?
Mr. Brannon: Yeah. She’s a homemaker. That’s it.
Mr. McDaniel: So you worked in Oak Ridge. What was that like? You worked at the gas station you said during the – while you were going to school.
Mr. Brannon: When the gas rationing was where you get the little markers on your windshield, A, B, and C for how much gas you can get on a coupon, I got an awful lot of bribes to get a little extra gas for a coupon. Of course I couldn’t do it because we had to trade the coupons in every time we bought gas. Matter of fact we had a little box in the gas station there with a lock on it with a little tiny hole in it to drop the coupons in whenever we collected it. We were out pumping gas during the busy season in the afternoon when the plant workers were getting off and a fellow walked inside while I was putting his gas in, and he got his two fingers down in that box and he couldn’t get them out because he had tight – he was trying to get the coupons out. So the older man was a manager, he come in there and he had to break the top off of the box to get his fingers out. So he got caught trying to steal. [laughter]
Mr. McDaniel: Oh I bet. Now where was this gas station? Where was it located?
Mr. Brannon: It was where the old Reeder Motor Company used to be.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh okay.
Mr. Brannon: They had a gas station and a garage there.
Mr. McDaniel: Now that’s down on the corner of the Turnpike and Georgia? Is that where it was?
Mr. Brannon: Georgia?
Mr. McDaniel: No, not Georgia.
Mr. Brannon: Oh it’s –
Mr. McDaniel: Yeah, there on the corner.
Mr. Brannon: It’s not on the corner. It’s nothing but dirt there now. They’ve tore that building down.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh it was on down –
Mr. Brannon: Oh it’s where California come in to the Turnpike.
Mr. McDaniel: Right. Yeah, right down there. So what was it like? I mean did you get to see very much of Oak Ridge when you were coming in and working? What was it like for you?
Mr. Brannon: Well, before I got my driver’s license I made calls when people run out of gas somewhere and would go down to K-25. They had a gas station down there they called The Happy Valley Den. Of course we just had gravel roads then. In the summertime that dust was so bad they kept water trucks running but in the hot weather they’d dry up and boy, when that traffic got off from the plants, all that rock on the Turnpike everywhere, it really created a lot of dust.
Mr. McDaniel: What did you think was going on here? Did you have any idea what they were doing?
Mr. Brannon: No, I didn’t have any idea.
Mr. McDaniel: What about your dad? Do you think he did?
Mr. Brannon: Uhn-uhn.
Mr. McDaniel: He just knew it was a big government complex.
Mr. Brannon: Well, even the people working in the plants, they didn’t really know what they were doing. Of course, I went to work in K-25 in 1950 in a barrier plant and the Korean War broke out in June and I went to work there in September and I had worked there about three months in the most secret part of the plant called the “barrier plant.” That was the nickname for it. So I got my draft notice, and I was making a dollar and sixty-three cents an hour; I thought I was really rich. I was dreading when I got that draft notice. So when I got it in the mail I took it to work with me and showed it to my department head, Hank Stoner, and he says, “You can’t go.” I said, “Why?” He said, “The job you’ve got here, you know too much.” So I couldn’t go to the service.
Mr. McDaniel: Is that right? Well, let’s go back. We’ll come back up to that in just a minute. You said you graduated high school from Oak Ridge High School.
Mr. Brannon: Yeah, in 1950. June the 5th.
Mr. McDaniel: So you were living in Norris during the war and coming down on the bus and working at the gas station. So your family moved to Oak Ridge. When did they move to Oak Ridge?
Mr. Brannon: Well, we moved here in 1946. The war was over then.
Mr. McDaniel: Right. So where did you live in Oak Ridge?
Mr. Brannon: Well, it’s the only house in Oak Ridge that’s still permanent, the stone house out on the Turnpike just before you go to Clinton. General Groves used that for his home and office until they built the Federal Building and got the Alexander [Inn] built. That was his headquarters. So it’s on the National Historical Record now.
Mr. McDaniel: But you all moved there in ’46; that’s where you all moved to.
Mr. Brannon: Mhm.
Mr. McDaniel: Do you know who lived there before the war?
Mr. Brannon: Yeah. His name was Orrin Hackworth. He and his wife Lynn had just built the house less than six months before the war broke out. When the government come in and gave all the people in Oak Ridge, the farmers that had crops and everything all the way down towards K-25, all over the place they gave them three months to get out so they could tear their houses down. But they gave Orrin Hackworth ten days. He moved to Clinton, him and his wife Lynn. Then General Groves took that as his office and residence until they got a place for him to live.
Mr. McDaniel: Till they built the Castle on the Hill and the Guest House [Alexander Inn].
Mr. Brannon: Yeah. There was no wood building then, not what it looks like now.
Mr. McDaniel: Yeah, sure. Of course. So you all moved there in ’46 and I guess you went to Oak Ridge High School. What was life like in Oak Ridge after the war?
Mr. Brannon: Gosh, I don’t know how to explain that. Things changed, I mean, once they got the guard gates out.
Mr. McDaniel: Yeah, that happened in ’49. So you were here three years.
Mr. Brannon: Yeah. I was there when they put the little – supposed to be atomic flash that broke the ribbon.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh yeah. You were there for that day?
Mr. Brannon: Yeah. I’m in the picture wherever – it was in an Oak Ridge Journal, back then they called it.
Mr. McDaniel: Sure. I got a copy of that picture. You’re in that photo, huhn?
Mr. Brannon: Yeah, I’m in that picture. See, our house was just right there where that Turnpike gate was.
Mr. McDaniel: Sure, exactly. But now on that day in ’49 when they opened the gates, of course they had a big parade and had all the events and everything.
Mr. Brannon: Yeah. They had Rod Cameron. He came in and he – I had to go to Knoxville and pick him up, him and Adele Jergens and Adolf Menjou, all Hollywood stars and that was in ’49.
Mr. McDaniel: Yeah, March of ’49 is when it happened.
Mr. Brannon: Yeah. So they sent me to Knoxville. I had a driver’s license then. I was working at Reeder’s Chevrolet. So my dad told me to go over to Andrew Johnson Hotel and pick Rod Cameron up. He flew in to Knoxville and he stayed in the Andrew Johnson Hotel that night and I went over there to pick him up. I went into the hotel to get him and he looked like he was nine foot tall to me.
Mr. McDaniel: Is that right?
Mr. Brannon: So I had to let the top down on the convertible because he was so tall. Of course it was a nice day. So I brought him back to Oak Ridge and then they had a big blowout party and everything at the old Grove Recreation Hall then.
Mr. McDaniel: Sure. It was the Oak Terrace. They had the dinner that night at the Oak Terrace. Who was I – Harold Coffer. Harold Coffer. Do you know Harold Coffer?
Mr. Brannon: Coffer?
Mr. McDaniel: Yeah.
Mr. Brannon: No.
Mr. McDaniel: He said he had – that was one of his jobs that day was to run up and get I think a couple of those celebrities or something and drive them to Oak Ridge as well.
Mr. Brannon: Yeah. They gave me Rod. I’d rather had Adele Jergens but –
Mr. McDaniel: Well, I think that’s who he had.
Mr. Brannon: She was a beautiful thing.
Mr. McDaniel: [laughter] So anyway, this was 1949. You graduated – you moved here in ’46. When did you graduate Oak Ridge High School?
Mr. Brannon: June 5th, 1950.
Mr. McDaniel: 1950. Now did you go to work right after that or – you said you used to work at K-25?
Mr. Brannon: Yeah. Well shortly after that I went to work at K-25 in September after that.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh okay. So in September of ’50 you went to work at K-25 and you worked for Henry Stoner out there at the Barrier Plant?
Mr. Brannon: Yeah.
Mr. McDaniel: Now did they – I guess they had to do a clearance on you to get you to work out there.
Mr. Brannon: Yeah, I had to have a clearance. I put the application in right after I got out of high school and my clearance come through then in September. So I went to work there and I got my draft notice I believe about November.
Mr. McDaniel: November. So tell me that story again. So you took it to Stoner.
Mr. Brannon: Well I just thought I had to go because the Korean War was going on. When I went in to work, I went in Hank’s office and showed it to him and he said, “Well, let me tell you something. I don’t believe I can – I don’t believe you can go because of what you know is going on right here.” See, I worked mixing all the ingredients to make the barrier. That was my primary job.
Mr. McDaniel: So what happened? So he just took care of it for you?
Mr. Brannon: Yeah. I didn’t hear any more from the Board.
Mr. McDaniel: The Draft Board I guess?
Mr. Brannon: Yeah, the Draft Board.
Mr. McDaniel: So how long did you stay out there at K-25 working?
Mr. Brannon: About almost eleven years.
Mr. McDaniel: Is that right?
Mr. Brannon: Yeah. They started laying off a lot at K-25 then. Of course it went by seniority. They went down – they finally closed it but they opened it back up again about five or six years ago for a short period. But they changed the making of it so much different from what I understand of what way we did it. Our way was crude.
Mr. McDaniel: Right. So you stayed there eleven years. Did you work in that same department the whole time?
Mr. Brannon: Yeah, all the time.
Mr. McDaniel: You worked making barrier.
Mr. Brannon: Yeah, that barrier it separated U-235 and U-238.
Mr. McDaniel: It went in those tubes and the tubes went in the pipes.
Mr. Brannon: The converters.
Mr. McDaniel: The converters and all –
Mr. Brannon: That was forced through the tubes and it separated 235 which is bomb grade and the 238.
Mr. McDaniel: Right. I guess when you were working there those eleven years from, let’s say, ’50 to ’61 or so, they were still making bomb grade, enriching bomb grade uranium weren’t they?
Mr. Brannon: Yeah.
Mr. McDaniel: Yeah, before I guess the Cold War and our nuclear stockpile.
Mr. Brannon: Yeah, and then these nuclear plants, they’ve used it there now. Japan is experiencing it right now of course.
Mr. McDaniel: Sure, exactly.
Mr. Brannon: But you know, one of the funniest things? In 1957 – maybe it’s ’57 – yeah. I was still working there and they were still high secret. I went to a Dr. Holden with the Hong Kong flu. I went to his office and they had Time Magazine there. Well I picked that magazine up and it had a picture. The French had learned how to separate uranium and had a big picture of the identical thing that we had there, the tubes, except theirs was about that big around. Ours was about this big around. I took it in and showed it to Hank Stoner. I said, “Look here. The French is doing what we’re doing.” He looked at that and he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
Mr. McDaniel: Is that right?
Mr. Brannon: Yeah. They had a big story in there.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh, my goodness.
Mr. Brannon: But the only thing was is theirs was not nearly as precise because our tubes were small. You couldn’t blow – get air through it as far as that goes but it still separated the Uranium. The French had a real crude model but of course they’ve improved now I reckon.
Mr. McDaniel: Right, exactly. Well K-25 was doing total enrichment for them, I guess, back then, too. So they were – for them and Japan both. So you left there in what, ’61?
Mr. Brannon: Mhm.
Mr. McDaniel: What did you do then?
Mr. Brannon: I went to Detroit for a short period and worked at Hudson Motor Company but I only stayed there about – I don’t know – three or four months. They shut down for model change. So I came back home and went to work doing – building stuff like this, carpenter, home remodeling.
Mr. McDaniel: Were you working on your own or did you work for somebody else?
Mr. Brannon: Well I worked on my own but I hired a – I call him a first class carpenter which at that time was a lot more knowledgeable than I was because he worked as a carpenter all during the war for AEC I guess you called it. He and I joined, made a partnership. His name was Heffner. I forgot his first name but he’s dead now.
Mr. McDaniel: But you all spent – you said you spent about ten years remodeling a bunch of cemestos didn’t you? Is that what you did?
Mr. Brannon: Yeah, all cemestos, yeah.
Mr. McDaniel: That was in the ’60s I guess?
Mr. Brannon: Yeah.
Mr. McDaniel: So what was that like? I guess by the ’60s –
Mr. Brannon: Well we could work seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day for several years and not got caught up. Everybody was wanting new roofs, everything.
Mr. McDaniel: Well by then I guess the houses were almost twenty years old by then.
Mr. Brannon: Yeah and they were very bad shape. The cemesto roof, they were asbestos. Of course, the siding was asbestos, asbestos filled. We didn’t realize the danger of asbestos then, you know, when you start tearing those roof off with a matic, you got a lot of dust. It might be the reason I talk funny now. I don’t know.
Mr. McDaniel: [laughter] I’ll tell you a funny story while we’re right here. I had told you before we started recording that my wife and I, our first house in Oak Ridge was the “D” house on Pleasant Road and we got it in the early ’90s and started doing some remodeling to it. One of the things that we did was we enclosed the carport. Of course there was – between the carport and the dining room there was a big window there, but we took that window out to close that wall up and we knew when those windows were put in because they were put in June of 1957 because there was rolled up newspaper stuffed around the window as insulation for those new windows that said June 1957.
Mr. Brannon: Well, I didn’t do it.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh no, I understand. But so you did that for – and you stayed busy there for ten years or so?
Mr. Brannon: Yeah. It took that long before it finally began to settle down. Some of the people didn’t – they stayed in them till they fell down. They couldn’t afford it I don’t guess.
Mr. McDaniel: Sure. Now so you did that for ten years or so until around I guess 1970 or early ’70s?
Mr. Brannon: Yeah, around ten years.
Mr. McDaniel: So what did you do then?
Mr. Brannon: I have to stop and think.
Mr. McDaniel: Rest. Rest I guess, didn’t you?
Mr. Brannon: ’70s.
Mr. McDaniel: Early ’70s.
Mr. Brannon: Oh yeah. In the ’70s, my dad owned the property on the West End of town, the Minit Check grocery, like a West End gas station, and a package store, and he retired, so I took over the business.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh is that right? Okay.
Mr. Brannon: Yeah. I did that until I went to work at ORAU.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh did you?
Mr. Brannon: Yeah.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh okay. What did you do at ORAU?
Mr. Brannon: I was maintenance.
Mr. McDaniel: And you stayed there until you retired?
Mr. Brannon: No. I stayed there till 1981 and then I went to work at Oak Ridge Hospital. I was the building manager. They were building Physician’s Plaza then in 1984 and they had an ad in the Oak Ridge paper for a building manager. I forgot how it was, but someone that would oversee the building of it. It was a –
Mr. McDaniel: Kind of a construction manager wasn’t it?
Mr. Brannon: People out of Atlanta, Georgia, Metis & Oley, were the people that oversaw the building. So they hired me to – my office was on the third floor up there – to be there if the doctors need anything or any maintenance problems or heat and air, anything. I did that then till I retired in ’97.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh is that right? Now was that at Physicians Plaza? Is that where it was or was it the whole hospital?
Mr. Brannon: Well, they built Physicians Plaza in 1984. Then they started the West Mall Building. I was going to retire a lot earlier, and what I told my bosses was I wanted to retire early, not wait till I was sixty-five or seventy. They asked me to stay on until the West Mall Medical Park Building on New York Avenue was built and occupied and everything settled down. So I agreed to stay on another couple of years and move my office over there where I’d be where the construction was going on. About the time that got through I was ready to retire again and they were starting in the Eye Center Building there where the cardiology, the Eye Center and the –
Mr. McDaniel: The Heart Center.
Mr. Brannon: – Heart Center and the Family Clinic.
Mr. McDaniel: Sure. The Family Clinic there.
Mr. Brannon: It was all going on. So they asked me to stay till that was done. And the Cancer Building. So I stayed there until all the buildings were completed, everything was running smooth. I hired two people to come in and trained them to what they needed to be looking for, what to do, and I got the heck out of there then. I was already sixty-seven years old.
Mr. McDaniel: Yeah. Sure. I understand. So let’s go back. Your dad, when you all first moved here, you said he was half owner of the Reeder Motor Company there in Oak Ridge.
Mr. Brannon: Right.
Mr. McDaniel: Now how long did he do that? How long did he handle that?
Mr. Brannon: Well, let’s see, from ’43 till 1950.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh is that right? Okay. He just got out of that and decided to do something else?
Mr. Brannon: Yeah. He sold his half to the Reeders. He wanted to go into business for himself when this property come available on the West End to put up a garage and a gas station. As a matter of fact, he took his best mechanics with him.
Mr. McDaniel: Did he? Where was that located?
Mr. Brannon: On the West End of town. Do you remember where a Minit Check used to be? There is some kind of a boot place there now, shoes.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh yeah. It’s up where Chuck’s Car Care is, that –
Mr. Brannon: Yeah. Where that – they sell boots there in that old store building. It was called Minit Check, and that gas station and a garage and then a liquor store. Package store.
Mr. McDaniel: Package store, yeah exactly. But that’s where the Chuck’s Car Care was in that old gas station there.
Mr. Brannon: Yeah. That was all my dad’s property and we sold it in 1980 to Mike Anderson and Jackie Pope. They bought it to rent. But it kind of fell apart.
Mr. McDaniel: Right. Well, living in Oak Ridge and growing up in Oak Ridge and working here, what are some of the things that you remember that are kind of unusual or unique that really stand out in your mind?
Mr. Brannon: The only thing I found that was unusual was all the hundreds of miles of barbed wire fence and everything that went around the whole fifty-three thousand acres, guards patrolling. They had roads, dirt roads where they could drive all around all the time in their security cars and tanks and all that. There’s a creek that comes out of East Village, a spring that run through our front yard there on the turnpike and it runs out into what was Clinch River then, Melton Hill Dam now. They had three culverts, probably six foot in diameter. Three of them, it went under what’s called Melton Hill Lake now, and they were open. Anybody could come in and out if they wanted to.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh, is that right?
Mr. Brannon: Yeah.
Mr. McDaniel: My goodness.
Mr. Brannon: My friends from Norris, whenever they wanted to come down, rather than get a pass for them, I’d tell them, “Go out there and park outside the gate at the little park out there, walk down towards the river and come underneath the Melton Hill Lake.” They’re in Oak Ridge.
Mr. McDaniel: Is that right?
Mr. Brannon: So that was one thing security overlooked.
Mr. McDaniel: Yeah. My goodness. So I guess when you were coming in on the bus, you were old enough to have a badge. You were probably – by then you were twelve, thirteen, fourteen, something like that, I guess.
Mr. Brannon: Yeah.
Mr. McDaniel: You had to have a badge.
Mr. Brannon: Yeah. I had a badge with my picture on it.
Mr. McDaniel: Did you ever have problems with security folks?
Mr. Brannon: No.
Mr. McDaniel: No? I guess after a while they kind of got to know you, didn’t they?
Mr. Brannon: Yeah. I got to know all of them. Of course, I went up to Townsite there where a barber shop is now, about in that section. That’s where you got your badge, you know, picture made.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh, is it? So what kind of mischief did you get into in Oak Ridge during those days?
Mr. Brannon: Mischief?
Mr. McDaniel: Yeah.
Mr. Brannon: Gosh, I don’t know of any.
Mr. McDaniel: You didn’t get into any mischief, huhn?
Mr. Brannon: Not that I can recall. Of course it’s probably how you defined it.
Mr. McDaniel: Who are some of the people that you – I mean were there any big shots or people that ran the place that you ever had any encounters with, General Groves or Colonel Nichols or any of those folks?
Mr. Brannon: No. The only one I did is – I can’t think of his name. Alvin Weinberg?
Mr. McDaniel: Alvin Weinberg.
Mr. Brannon: Yeah, I’ve been to his house and he had a place down on the lake. That was before I was married, and the girl I was dating then, she was a little bit older than me, she worked there for AEC and we’d go down to his cabin. He always would throw a party down there and we’d go waterskiing down on Watts Bar Lake.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh, is that right?
Mr. Brannon: Yeah, but I never did know him personally.
Mr. McDaniel: Let’s stop for just a second, okay?
[break in recording]
Mr. McDaniel: Tell me about that creek that ran in front of your yard.
Mr. Brannon: Well, back during the war, it was just a small shack right at where Melton Hill Lake and Warehouse Road come in together, and he sold minnows, and there was always plenty of water there, and it run through our front yard. It came out of East Village up on top of the hill all the way through. Several years ago they had a earthquake over in Blount County, I believe. It shook Oak Ridge some. They felt it. Well it done something to that creek. Now the water comes down and goes underground and that creek gets dry.
Mr. McDaniel: Really? Is that right? My goodness.
Mr. Brannon: It takes a whole lot of rain to get it to where it will bypass that place where it cracked the ground underneath, I guess.
Mr. McDaniel: Really? Who lives in the house now? Who lives in that stone house?
Mr. Brannon: My son.
Mr. McDaniel: Your son lives there now. So it’s been in the family ever since you all moved to it in ’46?
Mr. Brannon: Yeah. After my mother died – Dad died first, then I remodeled the house on the inside, made it like new, and so my son – I sold it to him.
Mr. McDaniel: I’m surprised nobody’s come along – and they may have – come along and tried to buy it from you. I know because you got the –
Mr. Brannon: Well it’s zoned commercial.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh, is it?
Mr. Brannon: See, when they sold the house, how mother got it, they – when Oak Ridge published – every house in Oak Ridge, forty-two hundred of them, I believe, to be sold, they published every house in Oak Ridge and the price, but they didn’t have that house in there.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh, they didn’t?
Mr. Brannon: No. So Mother called the Housing Authority. It was headed by Alex Johnson – that was 1946 – and asked him and he said, “Ms. Brannon that house is not to be sold. It’s to be torn down because it’s in a commercial zone.” So when Dad was a policeman in Norris, he was the only notary public over there. And David Lilienthal was head of TVA. He was the Chairman and he lived in Norris, and he’d come to Dad all the time for work, notary public work. He and Dad were big fishermen.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh, is that right?
Mr. Brannon: They fished together. His wife was named [Helen]. So when Mother called Alex Johnson at the Housing Authority, who was heading up the selling of the houses, she was crying and wanted to know why the house wouldn’t be sold. Well he told her that it was in commercial and it would be tore down. Well Mother called [Helen Lilienthal] in Washington – her and [Helen] were real good friends – and told her about it. She said, “Well David’s going to – [laughter] David’s not here, but I’ll tell him whenever he gets home.” Mama said that – she told it that that was her castle and she didn’t see why they’d want to tear that house down. But Alex Johnson already told her it would be tore down. Well the next morning, Mother got a call from Alex Johnson. He said, “Mrs. Brannon if you haven’t left, you want to come up here and be the first house owners in Oak Ridge, come up here.”
Mr. McDaniel: Is that right?
Mr. Brannon: Well they had photographers there. I’ve got a picture of it at home showing – I’ve showed it to people down at the library. Mother and Dad and the head of AEC then, all the big crowd there and Alex Johnson. It says, “First homeowners in Oak Ridge.”
Mr. McDaniel: My goodness.
Mr. Brannon: See, that was supposed to be kind of kept, you know, not say that she called the head of Washington. They put it in the paper [that she] called the State Department, but that was wrong. She called David Lilienthal.
Mr. McDaniel: Was he still the head of TVA then?
Mr. Brannon: No, he was head of AEC then. He was Alex Johnson’s boss.
Mr. McDaniel: Yeah, he was the head of AEC at that point.
Mr. Brannon: That’s the way it was. So Mother didn’t know it, but see, that was supposed to be all kind of under the cover. No deals. No sweetheart. Well a reporter from the Oak Ridger came down and talked to Mother about it, and Mother didn’t know. She was telling the reporter – he asked him all kind of questions – she was telling that reporter about calling David Lilienthal’s wife, [Helen] and David called Alex Johnson and the next day he called her. That come out in the Oak Ridger.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh, my goodness.
Mr. Brannon: I told Mother. I said, “Lord you should” – she said, “I didn’t know she was going to put that in the paper and I didn’t know there was anything wrong with it.” I still got a copy of that.
Mr. McDaniel: Hey, when you were – I guess when you were a teenager in the war, was there anything that you did that you participated in for like the war effort because people were collecting aluminum and buying war bonds?
Mr. Brannon: Tires, yeah.
Mr. McDaniel: Tires? Tell me about that.
Mr. Brannon: Well, see when I lived in Norris, the gas station was about two miles away. There was only one there, and it was kind of – it was out of town. You got two cents a pound for old rubber. I’d go through ditch lines for – over the years that was all farm land where people had had tractors over the years, way back in the ’20s and ’30s, and I’d find old tires, and I’d roll them all the way down there, two miles, to get fifty cents maybe or something.
Mr. McDaniel: That was pretty good though back then, wasn’t it.
Mr. Brannon: Yeah. And then they was buying steel then too and they’d done away with the railroad somewhere and left two or three railroad tracks laying in the wood and I couldn’t pick them up.
Mr. McDaniel: I guess not. Speaking of railroads there was a railroad that ran right behind your house didn’t it? Was it there when you all moved there, that railroad line?
Mr. Brannon: Yeah. There was a lot of stuff in there going to Y-12. That railroad run through Y-12 off of the L&N track.
Mr. McDaniel: Sure. It was right behind your house wasn’t it?
Mr. Brannon: Yeah. It had all kind of stuff coming in there. Camouflage, so to speak.
Mr. McDaniel: Sure. Well is there anything else that I hadn’t asked you about that you want to talk about?
Mr. Brannon: No.
Mr. McDaniel: No? [laughter] Well, we thank you for taking time to talk with us and remembering some and talking about the – your life in Oak Ridge.
Mr. Brannon: Well that was something I like to remember but I wouldn’t want to do it again. I’ll just say that.
Mr. McDaniel: [laughter] All right. Thank you Mr. Brannon. I appreciate it.
[end of recording]

Click tabs to swap between content that is broken into logical sections.

ORAL HISTORY OF ROBERT BRANNON
Interviewed and recorded by Keith McDaniel
March 18, 2011
Mr. McDaniel: I’m Keith McDaniel and I’m speaking with Mr. Robert Brannon, Bob, and thanks for taking time to talk with us.
Mr. Brannon: I’ve got more time than anything else.
Mr. McDaniel: So tell me a little bit about where you were born and raised and something about your family.
Mr. Brannon: Well I was born down in Overton County in 1931 and when they started to build Norris Dam in 1933 my dad was a coal miner there and he came to Norris to work as an electrician building the dam. We moved to Norris in 1933. He continued that till the dam was built in ’36 and then he become a police sergeant with the TVA [Tennessee Valley Authority] Police Department and he stayed with that until 1943 and he and Colonel Reeder of Reeder Motor Chevrolet in Knoxville went in partners to put Reeder Motor Company in Oak Ridge in ’43. During that time, everybody had to keep their car running the best they could. They’d run around on flat tires, wheels. You couldn’t buy tires. Oil was scarce. Gas coupons, you only get three gallons on one kind of a coupon. Doctors got five gallon on every coupon, and that lasted on up till after the war was over. I worked in the gas station on weekends and during the summer months, rode a bus from Norris. Was bringing workers all the way from Norris through Clinton in to build Oak Ridge and I would ride the bus down here on weekends and on weekdays during the school vacation I rode that dilapidated bus into Oak Ridge, worked eight hours in the gas station and then back to Norris again.
Mr. McDaniel: Back to Norris. So you lived in Norris during the war, is that correct?
Mr. Brannon: Yeah.
Mr. McDaniel: But your dad was down here working at the Reeder –
Mr. Brannon: Yeah, he was a fifty percent owner of Reeder Motor Company then.
Mr. McDaniel: So during the war you were probably in your teens, weren’t you?
Mr. Brannon: Oh yeah.
Mr. McDaniel: You were mid-teens.
Mr. Brannon: Yeah, the war started in ’41 and of course I was born in ’31. I was ten years old when it started.
Mr. McDaniel: Now did you have brothers and sisters?
Mr. Brannon: Yeah, I’ve got one brother and two sisters living and one deceased.
Mr. McDaniel: Now what about your mom? Was she just a stay-at-home – a homemaker?
Mr. Brannon: Yeah. She’s a homemaker. That’s it.
Mr. McDaniel: So you worked in Oak Ridge. What was that like? You worked at the gas station you said during the – while you were going to school.
Mr. Brannon: When the gas rationing was where you get the little markers on your windshield, A, B, and C for how much gas you can get on a coupon, I got an awful lot of bribes to get a little extra gas for a coupon. Of course I couldn’t do it because we had to trade the coupons in every time we bought gas. Matter of fact we had a little box in the gas station there with a lock on it with a little tiny hole in it to drop the coupons in whenever we collected it. We were out pumping gas during the busy season in the afternoon when the plant workers were getting off and a fellow walked inside while I was putting his gas in, and he got his two fingers down in that box and he couldn’t get them out because he had tight – he was trying to get the coupons out. So the older man was a manager, he come in there and he had to break the top off of the box to get his fingers out. So he got caught trying to steal. [laughter]
Mr. McDaniel: Oh I bet. Now where was this gas station? Where was it located?
Mr. Brannon: It was where the old Reeder Motor Company used to be.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh okay.
Mr. Brannon: They had a gas station and a garage there.
Mr. McDaniel: Now that’s down on the corner of the Turnpike and Georgia? Is that where it was?
Mr. Brannon: Georgia?
Mr. McDaniel: No, not Georgia.
Mr. Brannon: Oh it’s –
Mr. McDaniel: Yeah, there on the corner.
Mr. Brannon: It’s not on the corner. It’s nothing but dirt there now. They’ve tore that building down.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh it was on down –
Mr. Brannon: Oh it’s where California come in to the Turnpike.
Mr. McDaniel: Right. Yeah, right down there. So what was it like? I mean did you get to see very much of Oak Ridge when you were coming in and working? What was it like for you?
Mr. Brannon: Well, before I got my driver’s license I made calls when people run out of gas somewhere and would go down to K-25. They had a gas station down there they called The Happy Valley Den. Of course we just had gravel roads then. In the summertime that dust was so bad they kept water trucks running but in the hot weather they’d dry up and boy, when that traffic got off from the plants, all that rock on the Turnpike everywhere, it really created a lot of dust.
Mr. McDaniel: What did you think was going on here? Did you have any idea what they were doing?
Mr. Brannon: No, I didn’t have any idea.
Mr. McDaniel: What about your dad? Do you think he did?
Mr. Brannon: Uhn-uhn.
Mr. McDaniel: He just knew it was a big government complex.
Mr. Brannon: Well, even the people working in the plants, they didn’t really know what they were doing. Of course, I went to work in K-25 in 1950 in a barrier plant and the Korean War broke out in June and I went to work there in September and I had worked there about three months in the most secret part of the plant called the “barrier plant.” That was the nickname for it. So I got my draft notice, and I was making a dollar and sixty-three cents an hour; I thought I was really rich. I was dreading when I got that draft notice. So when I got it in the mail I took it to work with me and showed it to my department head, Hank Stoner, and he says, “You can’t go.” I said, “Why?” He said, “The job you’ve got here, you know too much.” So I couldn’t go to the service.
Mr. McDaniel: Is that right? Well, let’s go back. We’ll come back up to that in just a minute. You said you graduated high school from Oak Ridge High School.
Mr. Brannon: Yeah, in 1950. June the 5th.
Mr. McDaniel: So you were living in Norris during the war and coming down on the bus and working at the gas station. So your family moved to Oak Ridge. When did they move to Oak Ridge?
Mr. Brannon: Well, we moved here in 1946. The war was over then.
Mr. McDaniel: Right. So where did you live in Oak Ridge?
Mr. Brannon: Well, it’s the only house in Oak Ridge that’s still permanent, the stone house out on the Turnpike just before you go to Clinton. General Groves used that for his home and office until they built the Federal Building and got the Alexander [Inn] built. That was his headquarters. So it’s on the National Historical Record now.
Mr. McDaniel: But you all moved there in ’46; that’s where you all moved to.
Mr. Brannon: Mhm.
Mr. McDaniel: Do you know who lived there before the war?
Mr. Brannon: Yeah. His name was Orrin Hackworth. He and his wife Lynn had just built the house less than six months before the war broke out. When the government come in and gave all the people in Oak Ridge, the farmers that had crops and everything all the way down towards K-25, all over the place they gave them three months to get out so they could tear their houses down. But they gave Orrin Hackworth ten days. He moved to Clinton, him and his wife Lynn. Then General Groves took that as his office and residence until they got a place for him to live.
Mr. McDaniel: Till they built the Castle on the Hill and the Guest House [Alexander Inn].
Mr. Brannon: Yeah. There was no wood building then, not what it looks like now.
Mr. McDaniel: Yeah, sure. Of course. So you all moved there in ’46 and I guess you went to Oak Ridge High School. What was life like in Oak Ridge after the war?
Mr. Brannon: Gosh, I don’t know how to explain that. Things changed, I mean, once they got the guard gates out.
Mr. McDaniel: Yeah, that happened in ’49. So you were here three years.
Mr. Brannon: Yeah. I was there when they put the little – supposed to be atomic flash that broke the ribbon.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh yeah. You were there for that day?
Mr. Brannon: Yeah. I’m in the picture wherever – it was in an Oak Ridge Journal, back then they called it.
Mr. McDaniel: Sure. I got a copy of that picture. You’re in that photo, huhn?
Mr. Brannon: Yeah, I’m in that picture. See, our house was just right there where that Turnpike gate was.
Mr. McDaniel: Sure, exactly. But now on that day in ’49 when they opened the gates, of course they had a big parade and had all the events and everything.
Mr. Brannon: Yeah. They had Rod Cameron. He came in and he – I had to go to Knoxville and pick him up, him and Adele Jergens and Adolf Menjou, all Hollywood stars and that was in ’49.
Mr. McDaniel: Yeah, March of ’49 is when it happened.
Mr. Brannon: Yeah. So they sent me to Knoxville. I had a driver’s license then. I was working at Reeder’s Chevrolet. So my dad told me to go over to Andrew Johnson Hotel and pick Rod Cameron up. He flew in to Knoxville and he stayed in the Andrew Johnson Hotel that night and I went over there to pick him up. I went into the hotel to get him and he looked like he was nine foot tall to me.
Mr. McDaniel: Is that right?
Mr. Brannon: So I had to let the top down on the convertible because he was so tall. Of course it was a nice day. So I brought him back to Oak Ridge and then they had a big blowout party and everything at the old Grove Recreation Hall then.
Mr. McDaniel: Sure. It was the Oak Terrace. They had the dinner that night at the Oak Terrace. Who was I – Harold Coffer. Harold Coffer. Do you know Harold Coffer?
Mr. Brannon: Coffer?
Mr. McDaniel: Yeah.
Mr. Brannon: No.
Mr. McDaniel: He said he had – that was one of his jobs that day was to run up and get I think a couple of those celebrities or something and drive them to Oak Ridge as well.
Mr. Brannon: Yeah. They gave me Rod. I’d rather had Adele Jergens but –
Mr. McDaniel: Well, I think that’s who he had.
Mr. Brannon: She was a beautiful thing.
Mr. McDaniel: [laughter] So anyway, this was 1949. You graduated – you moved here in ’46. When did you graduate Oak Ridge High School?
Mr. Brannon: June 5th, 1950.
Mr. McDaniel: 1950. Now did you go to work right after that or – you said you used to work at K-25?
Mr. Brannon: Yeah. Well shortly after that I went to work at K-25 in September after that.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh okay. So in September of ’50 you went to work at K-25 and you worked for Henry Stoner out there at the Barrier Plant?
Mr. Brannon: Yeah.
Mr. McDaniel: Now did they – I guess they had to do a clearance on you to get you to work out there.
Mr. Brannon: Yeah, I had to have a clearance. I put the application in right after I got out of high school and my clearance come through then in September. So I went to work there and I got my draft notice I believe about November.
Mr. McDaniel: November. So tell me that story again. So you took it to Stoner.
Mr. Brannon: Well I just thought I had to go because the Korean War was going on. When I went in to work, I went in Hank’s office and showed it to him and he said, “Well, let me tell you something. I don’t believe I can – I don’t believe you can go because of what you know is going on right here.” See, I worked mixing all the ingredients to make the barrier. That was my primary job.
Mr. McDaniel: So what happened? So he just took care of it for you?
Mr. Brannon: Yeah. I didn’t hear any more from the Board.
Mr. McDaniel: The Draft Board I guess?
Mr. Brannon: Yeah, the Draft Board.
Mr. McDaniel: So how long did you stay out there at K-25 working?
Mr. Brannon: About almost eleven years.
Mr. McDaniel: Is that right?
Mr. Brannon: Yeah. They started laying off a lot at K-25 then. Of course it went by seniority. They went down – they finally closed it but they opened it back up again about five or six years ago for a short period. But they changed the making of it so much different from what I understand of what way we did it. Our way was crude.
Mr. McDaniel: Right. So you stayed there eleven years. Did you work in that same department the whole time?
Mr. Brannon: Yeah, all the time.
Mr. McDaniel: You worked making barrier.
Mr. Brannon: Yeah, that barrier it separated U-235 and U-238.
Mr. McDaniel: It went in those tubes and the tubes went in the pipes.
Mr. Brannon: The converters.
Mr. McDaniel: The converters and all –
Mr. Brannon: That was forced through the tubes and it separated 235 which is bomb grade and the 238.
Mr. McDaniel: Right. I guess when you were working there those eleven years from, let’s say, ’50 to ’61 or so, they were still making bomb grade, enriching bomb grade uranium weren’t they?
Mr. Brannon: Yeah.
Mr. McDaniel: Yeah, before I guess the Cold War and our nuclear stockpile.
Mr. Brannon: Yeah, and then these nuclear plants, they’ve used it there now. Japan is experiencing it right now of course.
Mr. McDaniel: Sure, exactly.
Mr. Brannon: But you know, one of the funniest things? In 1957 – maybe it’s ’57 – yeah. I was still working there and they were still high secret. I went to a Dr. Holden with the Hong Kong flu. I went to his office and they had Time Magazine there. Well I picked that magazine up and it had a picture. The French had learned how to separate uranium and had a big picture of the identical thing that we had there, the tubes, except theirs was about that big around. Ours was about this big around. I took it in and showed it to Hank Stoner. I said, “Look here. The French is doing what we’re doing.” He looked at that and he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
Mr. McDaniel: Is that right?
Mr. Brannon: Yeah. They had a big story in there.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh, my goodness.
Mr. Brannon: But the only thing was is theirs was not nearly as precise because our tubes were small. You couldn’t blow – get air through it as far as that goes but it still separated the Uranium. The French had a real crude model but of course they’ve improved now I reckon.
Mr. McDaniel: Right, exactly. Well K-25 was doing total enrichment for them, I guess, back then, too. So they were – for them and Japan both. So you left there in what, ’61?
Mr. Brannon: Mhm.
Mr. McDaniel: What did you do then?
Mr. Brannon: I went to Detroit for a short period and worked at Hudson Motor Company but I only stayed there about – I don’t know – three or four months. They shut down for model change. So I came back home and went to work doing – building stuff like this, carpenter, home remodeling.
Mr. McDaniel: Were you working on your own or did you work for somebody else?
Mr. Brannon: Well I worked on my own but I hired a – I call him a first class carpenter which at that time was a lot more knowledgeable than I was because he worked as a carpenter all during the war for AEC I guess you called it. He and I joined, made a partnership. His name was Heffner. I forgot his first name but he’s dead now.
Mr. McDaniel: But you all spent – you said you spent about ten years remodeling a bunch of cemestos didn’t you? Is that what you did?
Mr. Brannon: Yeah, all cemestos, yeah.
Mr. McDaniel: That was in the ’60s I guess?
Mr. Brannon: Yeah.
Mr. McDaniel: So what was that like? I guess by the ’60s –
Mr. Brannon: Well we could work seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day for several years and not got caught up. Everybody was wanting new roofs, everything.
Mr. McDaniel: Well by then I guess the houses were almost twenty years old by then.
Mr. Brannon: Yeah and they were very bad shape. The cemesto roof, they were asbestos. Of course, the siding was asbestos, asbestos filled. We didn’t realize the danger of asbestos then, you know, when you start tearing those roof off with a matic, you got a lot of dust. It might be the reason I talk funny now. I don’t know.
Mr. McDaniel: [laughter] I’ll tell you a funny story while we’re right here. I had told you before we started recording that my wife and I, our first house in Oak Ridge was the “D” house on Pleasant Road and we got it in the early ’90s and started doing some remodeling to it. One of the things that we did was we enclosed the carport. Of course there was – between the carport and the dining room there was a big window there, but we took that window out to close that wall up and we knew when those windows were put in because they were put in June of 1957 because there was rolled up newspaper stuffed around the window as insulation for those new windows that said June 1957.
Mr. Brannon: Well, I didn’t do it.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh no, I understand. But so you did that for – and you stayed busy there for ten years or so?
Mr. Brannon: Yeah. It took that long before it finally began to settle down. Some of the people didn’t – they stayed in them till they fell down. They couldn’t afford it I don’t guess.
Mr. McDaniel: Sure. Now so you did that for ten years or so until around I guess 1970 or early ’70s?
Mr. Brannon: Yeah, around ten years.
Mr. McDaniel: So what did you do then?
Mr. Brannon: I have to stop and think.
Mr. McDaniel: Rest. Rest I guess, didn’t you?
Mr. Brannon: ’70s.
Mr. McDaniel: Early ’70s.
Mr. Brannon: Oh yeah. In the ’70s, my dad owned the property on the West End of town, the Minit Check grocery, like a West End gas station, and a package store, and he retired, so I took over the business.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh is that right? Okay.
Mr. Brannon: Yeah. I did that until I went to work at ORAU.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh did you?
Mr. Brannon: Yeah.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh okay. What did you do at ORAU?
Mr. Brannon: I was maintenance.
Mr. McDaniel: And you stayed there until you retired?
Mr. Brannon: No. I stayed there till 1981 and then I went to work at Oak Ridge Hospital. I was the building manager. They were building Physician’s Plaza then in 1984 and they had an ad in the Oak Ridge paper for a building manager. I forgot how it was, but someone that would oversee the building of it. It was a –
Mr. McDaniel: Kind of a construction manager wasn’t it?
Mr. Brannon: People out of Atlanta, Georgia, Metis & Oley, were the people that oversaw the building. So they hired me to – my office was on the third floor up there – to be there if the doctors need anything or any maintenance problems or heat and air, anything. I did that then till I retired in ’97.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh is that right? Now was that at Physicians Plaza? Is that where it was or was it the whole hospital?
Mr. Brannon: Well, they built Physicians Plaza in 1984. Then they started the West Mall Building. I was going to retire a lot earlier, and what I told my bosses was I wanted to retire early, not wait till I was sixty-five or seventy. They asked me to stay on until the West Mall Medical Park Building on New York Avenue was built and occupied and everything settled down. So I agreed to stay on another couple of years and move my office over there where I’d be where the construction was going on. About the time that got through I was ready to retire again and they were starting in the Eye Center Building there where the cardiology, the Eye Center and the –
Mr. McDaniel: The Heart Center.
Mr. Brannon: – Heart Center and the Family Clinic.
Mr. McDaniel: Sure. The Family Clinic there.
Mr. Brannon: It was all going on. So they asked me to stay till that was done. And the Cancer Building. So I stayed there until all the buildings were completed, everything was running smooth. I hired two people to come in and trained them to what they needed to be looking for, what to do, and I got the heck out of there then. I was already sixty-seven years old.
Mr. McDaniel: Yeah. Sure. I understand. So let’s go back. Your dad, when you all first moved here, you said he was half owner of the Reeder Motor Company there in Oak Ridge.
Mr. Brannon: Right.
Mr. McDaniel: Now how long did he do that? How long did he handle that?
Mr. Brannon: Well, let’s see, from ’43 till 1950.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh is that right? Okay. He just got out of that and decided to do something else?
Mr. Brannon: Yeah. He sold his half to the Reeders. He wanted to go into business for himself when this property come available on the West End to put up a garage and a gas station. As a matter of fact, he took his best mechanics with him.
Mr. McDaniel: Did he? Where was that located?
Mr. Brannon: On the West End of town. Do you remember where a Minit Check used to be? There is some kind of a boot place there now, shoes.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh yeah. It’s up where Chuck’s Car Care is, that –
Mr. Brannon: Yeah. Where that – they sell boots there in that old store building. It was called Minit Check, and that gas station and a garage and then a liquor store. Package store.
Mr. McDaniel: Package store, yeah exactly. But that’s where the Chuck’s Car Care was in that old gas station there.
Mr. Brannon: Yeah. That was all my dad’s property and we sold it in 1980 to Mike Anderson and Jackie Pope. They bought it to rent. But it kind of fell apart.
Mr. McDaniel: Right. Well, living in Oak Ridge and growing up in Oak Ridge and working here, what are some of the things that you remember that are kind of unusual or unique that really stand out in your mind?
Mr. Brannon: The only thing I found that was unusual was all the hundreds of miles of barbed wire fence and everything that went around the whole fifty-three thousand acres, guards patrolling. They had roads, dirt roads where they could drive all around all the time in their security cars and tanks and all that. There’s a creek that comes out of East Village, a spring that run through our front yard there on the turnpike and it runs out into what was Clinch River then, Melton Hill Dam now. They had three culverts, probably six foot in diameter. Three of them, it went under what’s called Melton Hill Lake now, and they were open. Anybody could come in and out if they wanted to.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh, is that right?
Mr. Brannon: Yeah.
Mr. McDaniel: My goodness.
Mr. Brannon: My friends from Norris, whenever they wanted to come down, rather than get a pass for them, I’d tell them, “Go out there and park outside the gate at the little park out there, walk down towards the river and come underneath the Melton Hill Lake.” They’re in Oak Ridge.
Mr. McDaniel: Is that right?
Mr. Brannon: So that was one thing security overlooked.
Mr. McDaniel: Yeah. My goodness. So I guess when you were coming in on the bus, you were old enough to have a badge. You were probably – by then you were twelve, thirteen, fourteen, something like that, I guess.
Mr. Brannon: Yeah.
Mr. McDaniel: You had to have a badge.
Mr. Brannon: Yeah. I had a badge with my picture on it.
Mr. McDaniel: Did you ever have problems with security folks?
Mr. Brannon: No.
Mr. McDaniel: No? I guess after a while they kind of got to know you, didn’t they?
Mr. Brannon: Yeah. I got to know all of them. Of course, I went up to Townsite there where a barber shop is now, about in that section. That’s where you got your badge, you know, picture made.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh, is it? So what kind of mischief did you get into in Oak Ridge during those days?
Mr. Brannon: Mischief?
Mr. McDaniel: Yeah.
Mr. Brannon: Gosh, I don’t know of any.
Mr. McDaniel: You didn’t get into any mischief, huhn?
Mr. Brannon: Not that I can recall. Of course it’s probably how you defined it.
Mr. McDaniel: Who are some of the people that you – I mean were there any big shots or people that ran the place that you ever had any encounters with, General Groves or Colonel Nichols or any of those folks?
Mr. Brannon: No. The only one I did is – I can’t think of his name. Alvin Weinberg?
Mr. McDaniel: Alvin Weinberg.
Mr. Brannon: Yeah, I’ve been to his house and he had a place down on the lake. That was before I was married, and the girl I was dating then, she was a little bit older than me, she worked there for AEC and we’d go down to his cabin. He always would throw a party down there and we’d go waterskiing down on Watts Bar Lake.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh, is that right?
Mr. Brannon: Yeah, but I never did know him personally.
Mr. McDaniel: Let’s stop for just a second, okay?
[break in recording]
Mr. McDaniel: Tell me about that creek that ran in front of your yard.
Mr. Brannon: Well, back during the war, it was just a small shack right at where Melton Hill Lake and Warehouse Road come in together, and he sold minnows, and there was always plenty of water there, and it run through our front yard. It came out of East Village up on top of the hill all the way through. Several years ago they had a earthquake over in Blount County, I believe. It shook Oak Ridge some. They felt it. Well it done something to that creek. Now the water comes down and goes underground and that creek gets dry.
Mr. McDaniel: Really? Is that right? My goodness.
Mr. Brannon: It takes a whole lot of rain to get it to where it will bypass that place where it cracked the ground underneath, I guess.
Mr. McDaniel: Really? Who lives in the house now? Who lives in that stone house?
Mr. Brannon: My son.
Mr. McDaniel: Your son lives there now. So it’s been in the family ever since you all moved to it in ’46?
Mr. Brannon: Yeah. After my mother died – Dad died first, then I remodeled the house on the inside, made it like new, and so my son – I sold it to him.
Mr. McDaniel: I’m surprised nobody’s come along – and they may have – come along and tried to buy it from you. I know because you got the –
Mr. Brannon: Well it’s zoned commercial.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh, is it?
Mr. Brannon: See, when they sold the house, how mother got it, they – when Oak Ridge published – every house in Oak Ridge, forty-two hundred of them, I believe, to be sold, they published every house in Oak Ridge and the price, but they didn’t have that house in there.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh, they didn’t?
Mr. Brannon: No. So Mother called the Housing Authority. It was headed by Alex Johnson – that was 1946 – and asked him and he said, “Ms. Brannon that house is not to be sold. It’s to be torn down because it’s in a commercial zone.” So when Dad was a policeman in Norris, he was the only notary public over there. And David Lilienthal was head of TVA. He was the Chairman and he lived in Norris, and he’d come to Dad all the time for work, notary public work. He and Dad were big fishermen.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh, is that right?
Mr. Brannon: They fished together. His wife was named [Helen]. So when Mother called Alex Johnson at the Housing Authority, who was heading up the selling of the houses, she was crying and wanted to know why the house wouldn’t be sold. Well he told her that it was in commercial and it would be tore down. Well Mother called [Helen Lilienthal] in Washington – her and [Helen] were real good friends – and told her about it. She said, “Well David’s going to – [laughter] David’s not here, but I’ll tell him whenever he gets home.” Mama said that – she told it that that was her castle and she didn’t see why they’d want to tear that house down. But Alex Johnson already told her it would be tore down. Well the next morning, Mother got a call from Alex Johnson. He said, “Mrs. Brannon if you haven’t left, you want to come up here and be the first house owners in Oak Ridge, come up here.”
Mr. McDaniel: Is that right?
Mr. Brannon: Well they had photographers there. I’ve got a picture of it at home showing – I’ve showed it to people down at the library. Mother and Dad and the head of AEC then, all the big crowd there and Alex Johnson. It says, “First homeowners in Oak Ridge.”
Mr. McDaniel: My goodness.
Mr. Brannon: See, that was supposed to be kind of kept, you know, not say that she called the head of Washington. They put it in the paper [that she] called the State Department, but that was wrong. She called David Lilienthal.
Mr. McDaniel: Was he still the head of TVA then?
Mr. Brannon: No, he was head of AEC then. He was Alex Johnson’s boss.
Mr. McDaniel: Yeah, he was the head of AEC at that point.
Mr. Brannon: That’s the way it was. So Mother didn’t know it, but see, that was supposed to be all kind of under the cover. No deals. No sweetheart. Well a reporter from the Oak Ridger came down and talked to Mother about it, and Mother didn’t know. She was telling the reporter – he asked him all kind of questions – she was telling that reporter about calling David Lilienthal’s wife, [Helen] and David called Alex Johnson and the next day he called her. That come out in the Oak Ridger.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh, my goodness.
Mr. Brannon: I told Mother. I said, “Lord you should” – she said, “I didn’t know she was going to put that in the paper and I didn’t know there was anything wrong with it.” I still got a copy of that.
Mr. McDaniel: Hey, when you were – I guess when you were a teenager in the war, was there anything that you did that you participated in for like the war effort because people were collecting aluminum and buying war bonds?
Mr. Brannon: Tires, yeah.
Mr. McDaniel: Tires? Tell me about that.
Mr. Brannon: Well, see when I lived in Norris, the gas station was about two miles away. There was only one there, and it was kind of – it was out of town. You got two cents a pound for old rubber. I’d go through ditch lines for – over the years that was all farm land where people had had tractors over the years, way back in the ’20s and ’30s, and I’d find old tires, and I’d roll them all the way down there, two miles, to get fifty cents maybe or something.
Mr. McDaniel: That was pretty good though back then, wasn’t it.
Mr. Brannon: Yeah. And then they was buying steel then too and they’d done away with the railroad somewhere and left two or three railroad tracks laying in the wood and I couldn’t pick them up.
Mr. McDaniel: I guess not. Speaking of railroads there was a railroad that ran right behind your house didn’t it? Was it there when you all moved there, that railroad line?
Mr. Brannon: Yeah. There was a lot of stuff in there going to Y-12. That railroad run through Y-12 off of the L&N track.
Mr. McDaniel: Sure. It was right behind your house wasn’t it?
Mr. Brannon: Yeah. It had all kind of stuff coming in there. Camouflage, so to speak.
Mr. McDaniel: Sure. Well is there anything else that I hadn’t asked you about that you want to talk about?
Mr. Brannon: No.
Mr. McDaniel: No? [laughter] Well, we thank you for taking time to talk with us and remembering some and talking about the – your life in Oak Ridge.
Mr. Brannon: Well that was something I like to remember but I wouldn’t want to do it again. I’ll just say that.
Mr. McDaniel: [laughter] All right. Thank you Mr. Brannon. I appreciate it.
[end of recording]